


Longing

by Cryon



Category: Doki Doki Literature Club! (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Awkward Romance, Eventual Romance, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Literature, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-03-27 17:39:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13885803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cryon/pseuds/Cryon
Summary: They both knew pain. Neither could flee from it.Until the day they met, and in each other found a way out.The mysterious path laid down by a feeling called "longing".





	1. An Ode called "Prelude"

**Author's Note:**

> As can be expected from the characters involved, heavy themes like depression, abuse and self harm may have a chance to come up and be explored in the course of the story proper, so please be mindful of this before deciding whether to give the story a spin or not!

Thinking about it,  
Since the very start  
This was a foregone conclusion.

“H-hey, what’s this about…! If the others come in and see us...”

All it took to admit the obvious truth  
Was a bold impetus from within  
So  
So  
_So_ great  
As to E C L I P S E  
Their weakness.

“I-It’s your fault…! You don't exactly make it easy to resist k-ki... kissing you!”

A wavering, fragile thing  
Delicate petals of courage  
Blown across a stormy night  
Desperately  
Hesitatingly  
Seeking the warmth of

“Sorry...”

The sweetness of

“What’re you apologizing for! It’s my fault that...”

The fragrance of

“Mh? What was that? I didn’t hear--”

The happiness of

“T-that I lo… aaargh, don’t make me say embarassing things like--”

The unbridled passion of

“Say it.”  
“Huh?”  
“Please.”

Of...

“It… It’s my fault that I love you, Yuri.”  
“Thank you, Natsuki.”  
“For sounding like a dumbass?”  
“For loving me back.”  
“Ah…”

Ever since the beginning  
Bound together  
By an emotion called

**Longing**


	2. Apple Juice

“Please join our club!”

There was a pregnant pause. Pregnant with  _ what _ , exactly, was left to anyone’s guess. Sayori, for her part, saw a chance - an impossibly tiny one, buried deep within a half-lidded gaze. She truly, sincerely saw this hopeful little bud of hope, dangling desperately from a pink eyebrow arched so high it promised only tragedy and disappointment for any fall that would have begun from atop it.   
Sayori waited, her hands balled up into fists as if grasping the invisible strands of hope dangling somewhere in the empty air near her pursed lips. She waited, for the moment when the straight line reflected in her blue eyes’ intense stare would finally,  _ finally _ curve under the strain of a positive answer, turning into a smile. She waited, letting silence brew an eternity out of mere seconds, until at last…!

**Siiiiip** ping noises seldom answer questions in a satisfactory manner. Natsuki made it a point to show that this was not going to be an exception. It was as close to the definition of ‘ruthless’ the mere act of sucking apple juice through a straw could have been. There was commitment behind the physical strain she put her untrained lungs under that defied reason. The cardboard box began crumbling between her small fingers long before their contents and been sapped completely out, seemingly fishing for mercy in a dry lake.   
It was a matter of principle, to Natsuki. A statement that language hadn’t quite developed the syntactic structure or vocabulary to properly convey. Anyone else could, and certainly would have argued, that a simple ‘no’ would have more than sufficed. Not Natsuki, though. Not after having been part of that hypothetical crowd for far too many times. Her visage was a mask of stern, undaunted refusal painted with the bright colors of immaturity.

The time for words had come, again and again, until at last it had gone. Now, it was only sipping noises. And  _ damn _ if Natsuki wasn’t giving it her all to sip the hell out of that juice box.

“Come  _ ooon _ …”

Whatever sliver of hope Sayori may have harbored, it ended up deflating like the girl herself apparently did. The decimated remnants of a poor high schooler spread all over Natsuki’s desk while still in the middle of her distraught whimper, a pretty blob of auburn disappointment held back only by the chair pressed against her sighing chest. In a display of graciousness frankly unexpected after her pitiless bout, the pink-haired owner of the suddenly invaded desk raised her half-empty juice box to let the remaining surface be further occupied by her defeated adversary.

“How many times did I ask already?” Sayori had decided to trade the pep in her voice with a bemoaned tone that fit her current mood better.   
“Dunno. I lost count at ten.”   
“And you’ve said no every time.”   
“Yep. ‘Cause I meant it.”

The harsh reminder was a wound inflicted upon Sayori that bled another anguished, exaggerated moan from her pouty lips. She grasped at the nearest thing she could find to keep herself from dissolving completely in a puddle on the floor - as luck would have had it, it was the sleeves of Natsuki’s uniform. Gentle yet firm tugging ensued almost immediately.   
A tentative tribute was offered: Natsuki held the juice box so that the straw hung temptingly in front of the bubbly girl’s lips. They clasped wordlessly around the tiny tube and began syphoning the sweet goodness at the end of it, with satisfaction too obvious to hide. No dice, however - even after sipping to her heart’s content, Sayori didn’t let her grip grow any looser.

“Will you say yes this time?”   
“Nnnope.”   
“You’re horrible.”   
“Thanks.”   
“Nooo, I lied, you’re not horrible…”

But by the gods of manga, shoujo or otherwise, Natsuki wouldn’t have minded  _ that _ much, had it meant not being yanked left and right by a girl-turned-squeaky-toy. Putting the juice box down and using her freed hands to take ahold of the soft cheeks dully reflected on her desk’s surface was revenge as much as an act of clemency - for Sayori, and the eyes rolling about in Natsuki’s sockets.

“Yes, yes, I know. You dumb puppy.”   
“Don’ caw me doomb… eben ash a joke, thatsh meeean...” No, Sayori had not suddenly become drunk off of chagrin. It’s just that articulating correctly with someone kneading your criminally malleable cheeks is no easy feat.   
“Who said  **I** was joking?”

Well, the gigantic grin plastered on her face was certainly a big hint. Not that it stopped Sayori’s head from shooting up and shower Natsuki with a torrent of tears-to-be.

“Wah! You really are horrible after aaa _ aaawawa _ …!”   
“Shaddap! This is what you get for pestering me!”

That is, more relentless cheek massages. Awfully convenient for all parties involved, as far as punishments went. And an optimal distraction to boot: a relaxing lack of words ensued that let both girls freely indulge into nothing but each other’s presence and copious amounts of light skinship. In other words, the perfect recipe for a couple of extremely self-indulgent smiles.

It didn’t last long. Recess had barely started, but spending all of it idling about wasn’t going to cut it. Not for Sayori, who was the first to break the momentary spell of silent laziness by grabbing Natsuki’s hands. A sad loss for every cutaneous receptor freed from its momentary bliss.

“Seriously, though. Why won’t you do it? You aren’t even in any other club, so…”

Her voice trailed off accompanied by her smile, but Sayori’s vividly curious gaze did not.   
There was no getting out of that with another attempt at humor. Those were the eyes of a killer - and the victim was Natsuki’s force of will. She took in a deep breath, leaned back against her chair, and looked up at the ceiling, as if to read the answer written on its blank texture.

“Well. It’s a literature club.  _ Literature _ . Do I look like a nerd to you?”   
“Do I?”

Brought down by a reflex, Natsuki’s gaze met Sayori’s innocent, tilting head. 

“You look like a cupcake.”

Sayori said goodbye to her attempt at being serious in the language of giggles.

“Come on, get real! You’ll never catch me dead reading some boring, depressing novel written by a musty old dude. Nah, me? I’m more about tankōbon.”   
“But that’s still literature!” managed to exclaim Sayori through the last throes of her giggling fit.   
“I-I mean, yes, of course it is! It’s just…  _ different _ .”   
“Different is good! Who doesn’t love some variety in their life?”   
“Not me, if it’s a billion pages long and lacks a single picture.”

It was a Mexican stand-off, only lacking the guns and the spiciness of Latino heat. The arms crossed in front of the pink haired girl’s meager chest barred any further entry, but it was too late, and glaring away was not going to magically make Sayori puff away. That girl had, for lack of better words, been  **activated**.

“Then we’ll stock the shelves with manga! Nobody’ll force you to do anything you don’t want to.”   
“You mean like you’re trying to do now by getting me into that club of yours?”

Touché. Sayori’s resolve wavered, but it moved steadfastly onwards, running on a deadly cocktail of passion and reckless desperation. Her hands clasped together under a lip bitten in the effort of thinking of something, anything…

Ah! A light sparkled on the pristine surface of Sayori’s widening eyes and her fresh new smile.

Yes, yes! Something like  _ that _ would do!

“You know, it’s not like reading is all we do. Well, it  _ is _ for now, but there’s this idea we’ve been toying with for a while, and we could totally do with one more of us to put it into practice.”

Natsuki waited, a solid monument to granitic stubbornness. The perfect target for an all-out-attack.

“Poetry!”

A single world exploded inside the shorter girl’s head with the potency of a thousand suns, or at least as many as the red cells rapidly conveying in the general direction of her face.

“W-what about it.”

The little slip of her friend’s tongue was all which Sayori needed to press her offensive. She snuck into the small opening proffered with the tenacity of a fluffy bird seeking a new home, only twice as bumbly.

“Weeell, the club manager had this neat idea of having us write poems and read them to each other. A fun bonding activity, you know!”

_ Like hell it was _ , according to how loudly Natsuki scoffed at the idea. And she was about to say so explicitly: she felt the words die in her throat when, upon turning her head back to Sayori, she found the latter leaning so forward that her impossibly big smile could have easily gobbled the pink-haired girl’s nose with an advance of only a few centimeters.

“Doesn’t it sound like something you’d enjoy doing?”   
“As if. Writing poems? W… what are we, artsy fartsy middle schoolers in love? Why’d you even get it in your head that I--”   
“Becaaause I kindasortasnuckapeekatyournotes.”

The sentence started slow and picked up all of a sudden with the impetus of a missile. Natsuki’s stunned brain struggled to decipher the mess of syllables tripping over one another until their meaning emerged, sprinkling a blushing fire over every square millimeter of her beet-red face.

“You did  **WHAT** !?”

Several pairs of eyes turned towards the source of loud screaming and the banging noise that had accompanied it. Two violet ones realized a moment too late what was going on, hovering above a mouth that embarrassment had turned into a squiggly line. Natsuki didn’t waste much more time sitting back from the chair she’d sprang up from, although her palms stayed glued - and aching a whole damn lot - on the very same desk they’d banged on, clinging to it for as if their life depended on it. An assumption that, in the girl’s own perception, might have well been true, especially from a social standing point. She turned to whispering, although it was more for her peace of mind, than to ward off the attention that she’d already garnered and quickly lost from the rest of the class.

“I’m very very  _ veeery _ sorry!”

Sayori’s palms joined pleadingly in front of her lowered face, forced to experience the tense whiplash of her success. The eggs were cracked at this point: might as well make an omelet out of it.

“I didn’t mean to, honest! It’s just that, some weeks ago I forgot to do my homework and saw them on your desk while you were in the bathroom, so I flipped some pages and… well… I saw… you know...”

No response came from the darkness beyond the apologetic girl’s shut vision. That did not bode well. Her stomach churned with guilt, trying and utterly failing to digest the betrayal she’d brought to light. Stupid… stupid, stupid! Of course she’d get angry about it! Who wouldn’t have--

**THUD.**

Sayori’s eyes shot open to find themselves swimming in a sea of pink. In an unexpected reversal of roles, it was now Natsuki making inappropriate use of her desk by seemingly trying to imprint her features onto its surface, judging by how hard her face was pressing against it. The taller between them was left at a loss thanks to a reaction she hadn’t quite envisioned, and even less sure that it was one worth feeling relieved about.

“How much.”   
“H-huh?” Sayori had to lean lower just so she could make out the slurred mess of a sentence sloppily making its way out of her despondent friend’s lips.   
“How much did you read.”

The nervous, stammering laugh Natsuki heard did nothing to assuage the awkwardness clinging to her every bone, to say the least.

“Kind of… all of it.”

Oh.  _ Oooh _ . Perfect. Just… perfect. Real peachy. Natsuki wished that strength had not left her arms, if only so that fingers connected to them would be able to do something far more drastic than simply cling to the sides of her aching head.

“Kill me. Just kill me now.”   
“But why! It was a very good poem, Natsuki!”   
“No, it wasn’t. You’re just saying that so I won’t feel like dying from being outed like the moron I am.”

A warm sensation enveloped Natsuki’s hands, and the portion of her head they were covering. She felt pressure, so gentle that for a moment, she found herself believing that her head was moving up on its own. It wasn’t until she saw Sayori’s uncharacteristic frown at the end of her slightly clouded vision that it became clear the other girl was holding it up.

“I’m genuinely sorry I looked at your poem without asking for permission.”   
“Who cares… I’m the dolt who wrote it.”   
“No, please listen. It was good, Natsuki. I really, honestly found it lovely. And… even though I feel sorry, I’m also happy I saw it. Not only was it cute, but it showed me a different side of you, and I’m so, so grateful for that. You know what I think, Natsuki? That it’s a shame you want to keep such a beautiful side of yourself hidden from others.”

It came like a caress infinitely lighter than that which Sayori’s thumbs as they calmly brushed against Natsuki’s own fingers and the ears beneath them. The voice of a guilty angel, too pure to slap her with the weight of her sin, too bright to let the shadows darken one’s heart further. It was ridiculously, positively unfair for someone able to pronounce outrageous drivel like that in so earnest a fashion.   
Sayori was an unbelievable existence as ever. And Natsuki, loathe though she was to swallow the gracious picture of herself that she’d been offered, could only feel grateful.   
For being allowed to call this ridiculous, marvelous person a friend. For putting up with a riotous, awkward cretin like her. And, yes, even for…

“...staring.”   
“Eh?”   
“They’re staring. Everyone.”

Sayori blinked once, then twice for good measure. Still holding onto the sizzling pot that was Natsuki’s face and the head attached to it, she turned to see that this time it was  _ her _ who’d provoked the attentions of her classmates. Her expression didn’t turn any less oblivious when she noticed a few among the grinners and the whisperers holding their cellphones and pointing not so discreetly towards the two friends caught in their own deprivatized matters.

“Maybe try to crank the sappiness - and the volume - down a notch next time you want me to feel like an ass for overreacting.”

Sayori made to apologize, but Natsuki calmly and slowly reversed the grip on her fingers and moved them away so that she was now free to shake her head, reassuring that silly friend of hers with the faint trace of a smile. She was fine now. Boiling and cringing from the bottom of her heart, but she’d sizzle back to normal… eventually.

“So.”   
“So…?”

Sayori’s head tilted quizzically, which also perfectly described her intonation. The drumming of Natsuki’s fingers gave a rhythm to the otherwise silent pause she’d caused. Outside of the window was a whole world, but even though she was looking at it, the pink-haired girl with the pouty expression didn’t  _ see _ any of it.

“Is there an application form or what?”   
“An app--huh?!”   
“Yeah, like. I can’t just show up out of nowhere and call myself a member, right?”

Soft, foamy gears began to spin furiously within their womb-like enclosure, grinding down the sentences fed to them into dust and subsequently wringing the meaning out of it. The process took a few seconds, marked by the progressive enlargement of Sayori’s eyes to the utmost limits set by their sockets. Her jaw was already going up and down in an attempt to sputter some sort of commentary for the implication she couldn’t fathom so easily.

“Does that mean… are you…”

There was only so much air Natsuki’s lungs could have held inside them. The girl decided to find the precise quantity by taking a deep, unnecessarily long breath, along with putting on an even less needed expression of excruciatingly pained exasperation.

“Maybe! It’s a  _ maybe _ for now, okay? And there’ll be conditions, of course. Like that shelf full of manga? Make that  _ two _ and I’ll start seriously consideri _ OOF _ !”

The rest of her sentence was suffocated, along with Natsuki herself, in the throes of Sayori’s sudden embrace and her barely held squealing. It was undoubtful that the pink-haired girl would have found much to complain about the new fodder fed to the ever-hungry harpies in the classroom who were likely to be drinking in the scene before them, had she not been so busy attempting to districate herself from the tight bondage of limitless happiness.

“Stop, stop! Nevermind, I’ve changed my mind! You crazy puppy, like hell I’m gonna show up at your stupid club room!”

 

A few hours and some classes later, Natsuki was standing in front of the Literature Club’s designated room, holding her bag in one hand and a fistful of regrets in the other.   
One look to the right.   
One to the left.   
Another to the right just for good measure.   
The hall was clear. It did little to assuage the girl’s doubts about this whole affair. If there was anything that worried her, it was whatever - or  _ whoever _ was waiting for her behind that unassumingly normal-looking door.   
Sayori had assured her that the only other two members of the Club were absolute sweethearts. Great, except Natsuki couldn’t think of a single person that her overly trusting friend wouldn’t have described in that same fashion. That included  _ her _ , come on.   
Well, it was either standing around like a dolt for the door to open itself, or doing so herself like a normal person was wont to do. Closing her eyes, Natsuki saw the mental image of her friend’s elation still fresh inside her mind. Ensuring that it wouldn’t be shattered by disappointment seemed like a good enough incentive to proceed and likely end up making a fool of herself in front of a couple snobbish bookworms.

“Here goes nothing.”

The handle felt cold against her fingers. She gave it a gentle push, watching the gray door slide aside with little effort to reveal a reassuringly plain classroom. It wasn’t until she took that hesitant first step inside, that Natsuki noticed she wasn’t the first to have showed up. She stopped in her tracks before they’d even had the chance to be laid down, standing like a mannequin and feeling like one in the presence of the person who had yet to notice her.

Long, flowing hair. Dark locks that would no doubt have felt silky smooth against one’s touch.   
A tall figure, carrying a light, elegant quality to its every gentle curve. The uniform could only wish to match the refined beauty of its wearer.   
Digits so charmingly delicate, it seemed impossible for them to have the strength to turn each page of the book they held down.   
And those eyes. Purple irises swimming in a sea of milky, droopy white. Weighed by a gravely dignity, as they filled their surface with the reflected marks of printed words.   
It should have felt nothing short of unfair for a mere high schooler to exude maturity as naturally as she made it seem. But to gaze upon her, so lost in her own little realm, was too humbling an experience, eliciting nothing but gratitude for a chance at partaking in its sight.

She sat, alone in the quietness, and seemed as if her vaguely bent posture was bowing to the gift of literature she was allowed to partake into. Not until a few seconds had passed did it finally register with her that the door had been opened, and a short girl was standing a few paces away, staring with a dumbfounded expression.

Unease spread like a poison on the mysterious girl. Her eyes darted quickly around the cruelly empty classroom to make sure that, indeed, it fell upon her to address the stranger. Her lips, such small little buds they were, already hanging open by virtue of their owner’s rapidly increasing anxiety, mouthed something a few times without a single sound escaping them.   
Natsuki stood quietly, her thoughts thrown in complete disarray for reasons she couldn’t grasp yet. She merely watched the girl take in a breath, followed by another, and then close her book with obvious reluctance. When the latter voice’s finally, timidly found the courage to come out, it was like the first few notes of a quiet blues song: a melancholy, quiet melody.

“Good day. Can I help you…?”

Yes, she could. But it was far too soon for either of them to know that answer.


	3. Pride and Prejudice

“Can I… help you?”

The question came again like a strained, faint echo. It bounced off Natsuki’s head with the violence of a meteor nonetheless, forcibly waking her up from a stupor that left her fishing for words in a dry lake. She felt fully aware of how weirdly idiotic she had to look, a bamboozled little thing unable to even do a stranger the courtesy of telling them why exactly she’d invaded their private sanctuary. The part of Natsuki’s brain still opposed to this whole Literature Club business lapped at this unease with gusto, pleasurelessly gloating over its late victory in a battle of reasonings it had already

“...lost?”   
“H-huh?”

Disoriented, Natsuki squinted in a futile attempt to decipher the words she hadn’t heard, caught like she was in an inner turmoil she could have frankly done without. Great, now she looked even more like a dunce, mulling over something that was likely to have been an extremely banal inquiry. Worst, she didn’t have the presence of mind to ask the dark-haired girl to repeat herself, like any normal person with their brain cells  _ not _ in disarray would have done: by the time the thought crossed her mind, the lone reader had already interpreted the puzzlement painted all over her unexpected visitor’s face for what it was. If there was a silver lining to this, it was that the girl seemed far from eager to mock Natsuki for that - the way her very presence shrunk further in her seat than it seemed possible from her size, one would have thought that it was her who felt more embarrassed between the two of them.   
And, like two mirrors facing each other, it did nothing but create a self-sustaining feedback of the awkwardness plastered on both of their faces.

“Did you get lost, perhaps? This room is reserved for the Literature Club’s meetings during these hours.”

Ah.   
Yeah, of course.   
That was it after all, mh?   
Gee, it wasn’t even funny.   
What kind of moron stumbles around searching for an answer, unable to realize she’d been holding onto it since the beginning? It took a stranger noticing as much, for her to see the reality of things as they were. That, like her every instinct had been screaming at her all along, Natsuki did  **not** belong to that place.   
Her mind was clear. She had but to bow to the girl, apologize for wasting both of their time, and turn on her feet to walk away, surer than ever about her convictions. Maybe send a text to Sayori along the way, telling her to please understand: there was just no way that this would have worked out, after all.

Natsuki would have done that, and part of her firmly believed that she  _ should _ have followed that course of action. So why were legs still planted on the spot, and the hardness of her balled up fists matched only by that of her childish frown?   
Go on, girl. There’s nothing waiting for you here but dusty old books and more scoffing looks than your daily diet recommends. Just open your mouth and…

“Yeah, I know. This is exactly where I wanted to be.”

That statement was many things, none of them a goodbye in any form or shape. It was too mild to call an outburst, and yet more than enough to make the other girl jump on her chair, eyebrows failing to keep up with the suddenly shifting momentum - they remained suspended from the edges of her forehead, hanging on for dear life and ripe with surprised disquiet.   
Resting her knuckles on the shifting weight of her hips, Natsuki tried and failed to squeeze a single droplet of pity from within herself. She found it much easier to let her chin rise defiantly, resting on the rapidly inflating sense of triumph that the sight filled her with.

“You’re still taking new people in, right?”

The dark-haired girl couldn’t have made her nod seem more reluctant had she tried to. Natsuki’s came in response looking like she wanted to show how one had to be: firm, confident and laced with venomous amounts of smugness.

“Perfect. If I feel impressed, by the end of today you might get yourselves a fresh new member.”

The other girl didn’t seem too compelled to reflect a tenth of Natsuki’s overly confident grin. There was little space left for one anyway, with several layers of badly hidden disappointment piling all over her expression.

“I… see. The club president has yet to arrive, so…”

In a desperate bid to regain her lost me-time, the taller girl scrutinized the class one more time in as furtive a fashion as possible while being stared directly at by her expectant guest. A defeated sigh was all she got from confirming that there was an abundance of seats available, and zero politeness involved in asking the pink-haired girl to wait elsewhere for the others’ arrival.

“You can sit down while waiting, if you’d like t--”   
“Don’t mind if I do.”

A pink blur rushed past the Literature Club member and her hanging jaw. Rapid footsteps like a drumroll before the detonation of noise from behind: a chair moved aside, weight plopped on it with calculated impetus, and the final screech of the floor, echoing the same protests quietly churning the increasingly disturbed girl’s stomach. Her lungs tentatively held onto their next breath, waiting: only when she made sure that silence had made its much belated return, did she release the trapped air, and hopefully some of her worries along with it…

**THUD.**

...Only for Natsuki to spell a clear statement with lips made up from the occupied desk and her own elbows. She was here to  _ stay _ . Okay, maybe just for today, but she had every intention to make it count. And to remind everyone of that - especially that gloomy-looking girl. The same one who had gone from a potential incentive to flee this nerdy nest to the primary cause of Natsuki’s stubborn entrenchment into the very same place.   
She plopped her chin into the chalice formed by her relaxed hands, and took to staring at the other girl’s back. When the latter turned her head ever so slightly to shoot a glance behind, she found Natsuki’s complacent grin waiting for her. It was a miracle that the girl did not break her own neck from how fast she moved her head back.

Silence peaked its head into the classroom and hesitatingly began spreading again within its premises, shaken only by the rustling sound of pages being turned. It wasn’t long before Natsuki’s burst of enthusiasm sizzled in absence of something worth looking at around the classroom. That left her with no choice but to focus on the only other person in the room, sitting two desks in front of the pink-haired girl’s and apparently back into her contemplative mood. A moment too late, Natsuki realized that they had more or less gotten back to square one, only worsened a thousand or so times.

It became apparent after a few minutes of increasingly engrossed observation of the silhouette in front of her. The gap between them was more than merely physical. There was a diligent sophistication about the way the girl would raise her delicate fingers to move aside a stray lock of hair not held in place by her hairpin. The methodical stability of her straightened back, hugged almost too tightly by the uniform. By the time Natsuki found herself instinctively trying to adjust her socks, after having noticed the perfect parallelism of the line drawn by the edges of those hugging the other girl’s lean calves, she felt herself sinking in a killer mixture of inadequacy and something else she couldn’t quite pinpoint.   
It was unfair, to put it bluntly. That kind of person should have only existed in the panels of a manga, surrounded by sparkles and blossoms, to act as a centrifugal force drawing every other character’s admiration and attention. Not in real life, where she made Natsuki feel like she would have been lucky to be a lazily-drawn doodle in the corner of the same imaginary page.

The finger-tapping noises were tolerable enough at first. It was when Natsuki’s heel joined the concert organized in honor of her desperate need to escape boredom and her diving self-confidence, that the cause of it all turned around on her chair with a conflicted face - the conflict in question likely involving a choice between yelling at her impatient guest and trying to be a tad more reasonable than that.

“You might not be a member yet, but...”

There was a pause, so short it would have been imperceptible, was it not for Natsuki’s diluted sense of time. In that moment she spotted the slight change of direction that the bookworm’s worried eyes had taken: following it led the pink-haired girl’s own gaze over her shoulder, to the one spot in the room least likely to have otherwise garnered her attention: the bookshelf.

“You may take one of the books and read it here, at least until everyone else has joined us.”

An eyeroll and a scoff would have usually sufficed as a response to the offer. At this point, however, Natsuki was willing to welcome anything that would take her mind off… whatever boat it had sailed onto without her permission. She still made a face quite like a grimace anyway out of pure spontaneousness, but a mere second passed between that and a resigned shrug.

“Sure, why not. I guess I might as well try and get into a clubby mood.”

Getting out of her seat, she caught a passing glimpse of her host soundlessly mouthing the word ‘clubby’ like someone entirely unsure of whether they were crunching on potatoes, cockroaches, or an unholy combination of the two. It almost caused Natsuki to stop in her tracks when the first step had barely been taken: the goofy contrast between that demeanor and that refined appearance was something else.  _ Cute _ , she would have ventured to say - ah, in a completely ironic manner, of course! Honest!

“Err…”

Oh dammit, almost slipped into another stupor there. Natsuki shook her head in a hurry and tried to regain the shattered remains of what little composure she had. It wasn’t much to begin with, and it was only partially due to her diminutive size.

“Y-yeah?”

A bitten lip underneath a difficult, wavering gaze. It made Natsuki swallow hard, unsure of what was to come.

“Please, do be careful with the books. Our budget is limited, so any kind of damage would be...”

Troublesome. Kind of like a pint-sized high schooler with a pair of puffed out cheeks and punches brewing inside her fists. And no budget was going to cover the kind of damage  _ that _ could have wrought if left unchecked.

“Do I look like a monkey or what! I think I know how to use a book without accidentally setting it on fire, thank you very  _ much _ !”

Natsuki’s yelling reverberated around the classroom. The multiplied vibrations of her voice came all at once for the bewildered girl - and provoked a part of her as of yet unseen. It was the side of her that immediately steadied her composure and froze her face in a glacial prison of disdain.

“Forgive me. I only thought it proper to tell you, since...”   
“Since what? Because I don’t look like some nerdy bookworm like you?”   
“That’s…! Is that how you address strangers who are only trying to be polite with you?”   
“Polite my butt! It’s how I talk to people who treat me like a moron because of some stupid assumption!”   
“If it’s baseless assumptions we are talking about, then yours are even more ridiculous.”   
“What, are you telling I’m wrong?”   
“Maybe I am!”   
“Yeah, you are - that is, wrong!”   
“Oh, you’re unbelievably…!”   
“You’re totally…!”

The door slid open with a dull noise desperate to intrude upon the yelling contest. Two pair of stressed eyes with flames still blazing within them turned to meet the pristine blue gaze of a familiar bundle of complete obliviousness.

“Natsuki! You really did come after… all?”

The girl wearing a red ribbon in her hair blinked with increasing confusion as her sight jumped between photograms depicting one or the other of the two already present in the room before her. It wouldn’t have taken a genius to understand that heaving chests and grimaces couldn’t be pointing towards the most amicable explanation for this predicament she’d unwittingly stumbled on.

“Is something wrong, you two?”   
“I’ll tell you what, Sayori! This nerd here thinks I’m some kind of idiot!”

Sayori followed Natsuki’s arm down to the index extending at the end of it. Her head trailed to and past the long-haired girl, stopping only when it was clear that her short-sized friend had not gotten into a quarrel with the chalkboard.

“That can’t be true! Yuri would never do that, isn’t that right?”

It was with an almost pleading smile that Sayori sought the long-haired girl, Yuri’s confirmation.   
The latter, who had gotten up at some point during the verbal scuffle, took a quiet moment to recollect herself. Her subdued sigh seemed to take away most of the tension that had seeped into her body, enough so that she let herself calmly slid back onto the chair. But her eyelids stayed low, the pupils behind them decidedly more interested in looking down at the closed book’s cover than to the pink blob glaring at her.

“Yes, of course, Sayori. Although it wasn’t for lack of trying on her side…”

Natsuki’s arms swung in such a wide, violent arc before crossing each other that the tailwind they raised could have blown Sayori back like nothing. Her animosity had gone past the stage of words and straight into gesturing with her head and shoulder to the sharp-tongued enemy in a manner that all but screamed  _ See? See? I’m the victim here! _

There wasn’t much to be done about the aftermath of a disaster that had already happened. It’s this kind of mentality that would have led anybody else to awkwardly standing between the two contestants and choosing which one to send away before further escalation.   
Of course, Sayori wasn’t just anybody. None other than her could have wordlessly taken ahold of Natsuki’s wrist and dragged her towards Yuri’s desk while leaving a trail of the former’s protests behind them.   
A resolute-looking Sayori stopped in front of Yuri, who raised her gaze without really understanding what was about to happen. It degenerated considerably when the auburn-haired girl substituted herself with Natsuki, so that now the quarrelers faced one other, and bitterly so.

“I know that neither of you is a bully! I’m sure whatever happened, it was just a silly misunderstanding you had. Let’s just make up and start all over, okay?”

Not so okay, judging by the one point five seconds they spent considering the offer and each other’s antagonizing expressions, before  _ hmph _ ’ing away. The situation was desperate; but so was Sayori to mend things between her friends. She got a grip of one of each girl’s hand, exerting an effort that was more emotional than physical to bring them so close they almost brushed each other. It was a competition waiting to happen to decide who would complain first - until Yuri and Natsuki both noticed that the smile plastered on Sayori’s lips was a flickering existence waiting to drown in a salty sea barely held at bay.

“It looks like you’ve had a rough start, so… can’t we just do it all over from the beginning? I’m sure if you gave each other another chance, you would get along just fine! Please? Pretty please with a cupcake and a cherry on top of it?”

That was it. No amounts of animosity could have withstood the sheer power of that finisher. It was a lovely bullet shot in the face of conflict and bled good will out of a rose-tinted wound. Most importantly, it sounded astoundingly silly on the tail end of such a serious plea.   
Natsuki did her best by biting her lips so hard they could have started bleeding any second now. Yuri didn’t even have the time to try something that drastic: she had already lost it by the time Sayori had breathed her everything out, and with a hand covering her mouth, could only let her shoulders quiver from her forcibly muffled laughter.

“There’s no winning with you,  _ cupcake _ .”

The sight of Natsuki tiptoeing and straining her arm to pat Sayori’s pouty head was an odd one to say the least. A fact to which both of them were privy; it still didn’t stop Natsuki to catch her breath and look away when she noticed Yuri staring at them with a very much unconcealed smile of hers.   
Natsuki knew that she had to do more than stand around looking embarrassed, however. She still kept her head turned aside, and there was reluctance in the gesture, but the hand she held out did so in as genuine a welcoming manner she could muster.

“Sorry about, well, everything… Yuri. I guess if Sayori says it, then she’s right. And maybe I did overreact a bit.”

From the corner of her eye, the girl spotted both the girl’s eyebrows. They were arching in a manner that only further helped spread the flood of red on her visage, so of course she shut her eyelids and retreated into the darkness, where nobody could make her feel smaller than she already was with mere looking.   
Then, warmth enveloped her outstretched hand. An unfamiliar glow, an even less familiar kind of softness, pressure so gentle she felt her digits undeserving of it. Natsuki slowly, with hesitation, opened her eyes to find that she was connected to the same girl she’d been trading harsh words with but a moment earlier, their hands held in a tentative embrace.   
She saw Yuri’s smile: a minuscule, wonky little thing. It was, at least in part, unmistakably artificial: but that part was constructed out of an evident lack of practice with such an expression, than any sort of falsehood.

“I apologize too. I hope we will be able to get along from now on... Natsuki.”

Awkward. She looked so, so awkward, looking so shy after her impetuous display earlier, so fragile despite being blessed with such refined looks.   
Natsuki felt herself smile too. She was happy - and relieved, in a sense. She was finally given a glimpse of something recognizable, something  _ human _ . As if it was only now that she could see Yuri as a person, rather than the immovable figure of her Natsuki had made up inside her head.   
There was a sole word she could think of to describe this visible chink in Yuri’s elegant armor, and now more than before did its use feel appropriate in her mind:  _ cute _ .

“Thank you so much, you two!”

Sayori’s voice betrayed her relief and wiped away any doubt that this was the correct path to take. The deal was symbolically sealed by her placing the handshake within her own gentle grip, her laughter the best victory jingle anyone could have hoped to hear. It was a scene too sappy for either of the two girls who had occasioned it to bear, and they let it happen anyway, echoing each other’s thought that turning into reddened, goofily smiling messes was well worth basking in the light of Sayori’s mirth.

It was not to last.

Clap.   
Clap.   
Clap.

A sharp noise punctured the peaceful bubble that had formed around the three girls from outside of it. A prelude to another series of sounds: footsteps, shoes touching the floor with a lightness almost otherwordly.   
Closer.   
Closer.   
Closer.   
Until it became impossible to deny it, and attention was finally granted to its source by varying degrees of surprised expressions. It was Sayori who spoke for the other two, greeting the presence that had stepped into the territory that was its own by right.

“Monika! You’ve arrived, finally!”

The girl in a long, chestnut ponytail offered a smile that seemed to come from a time and place so distant, notions like future and past ceased to matter. It was a smile that dripped with warmth and mischief both, an unholy matrimony of indecipherable opposites. And she offered its full brunt to the girls, hiding only her own interlaced fingers behind her back, while leaning forward in a posture that was a bit like a bow, and a lot like that of a deity peeking into the realm of mortals.

“Good day, everyone. Are you eager to start with today’s session of the Literature Club?”


	4. Three Septembers and a January

The box sat in the middle of the desk, its unassumingly white surface painted with the colorful reflections of the four observers surrounding it. The full spectrum of human curiosity bore down on the mysterious package with the silent impetus of an invisible storm, desperately clawing at the flimsy layers of cardboard whose hidden contents took a myriad of shapes within the embrace of speculation. Sight, stubborn in its refusal to accept defeat, sought an alliance with the other senses in an attempt to discern the elusive truth: it soon found a precious comrade in its neighbor, Smell. What the latter brought to light were sweet tidings, the whispered hints of a warm fragrance that teased the spirit and tickled the stomach. Taste, ever the voracious fellow, got wind of his brethren’s excited talks; soon enough it was drowning, a flood of saliva and anticipation sloshing about its moist abode.   
And yet, the lid remained sadistically sealed on the box, the sole feast going on being one of impatient gazes enjoyed by the young woman who had brought the object to everyone’s attention.

It would have been easy to break the silent spell she’d cast with a simple, almost too obvious question. And it seemed precisely what her half-lidded eyes, along with the barely perceptible curve of her lip above her intertwined fingers, were waiting for - perhaps  _ daring _ anyone to do so. She had fashioned a show of little subtleties, with her elbows resting on the desk otherwise left untouched by the three girls sitting around it, her complete lack of unprompted explanations and the overwhelming serenity she emanated from her very being.   
For all the differences in their personalities, the three girls facing this dilemma could only share an unspoken sentiment - that this excessive show of tranquility felt strangely close to a trap. It was a consideration born of something other than reason, the byproduct of an instinct deep beneath any layer of description.   
The question therefore wasn’t what resided inside the box, as much as who would dare thread into that unnervingly welcoming unknown to ask about it.

“Sooo… what’s inside this, Monika?”

A pause which had lasted far longer than the few seconds of mutually puzzled glances should have felt came to an abrupt, nearly disappointing end. Sighs escaped Natsuki and Yuri’s mouths that they themselves weren’t sure if they expressed disappointment or relief. Envy, perhaps - for the unfairly simplistic workings of Sayori’s mind, too busy enjoying life for what it was to preoccupy itself with wooly-headed machinations.   
The girl’s heedless face blinked at its own reflection in the pair of eyes staring back at it. Their owner let the question linger without an answer for a moment further, at the end of which her smile spread into a curve that beheld far less mystery about it.

“Cake!”

Monika’s voice was a sudden deflagration of enthusiasm which nonetheless retained plenty of composure to avoid shattering her stable image of unreachable elegance. A single world that teetered on the edge of a delicate equilibrium without falling over, while still enough to take aback her peers with its abruptness. It was a clever ploy in its utter ingenuousness, a way to keep the others on the edge despite having confirmed their most prominent suspicions.

It had barely been a minute since Natsuki had met the girl sitting across her from the desk where she and the others had been made to convey around. And even in that limited timeframe, an impression had already began to solidify within her: that acting cautiously in the presence of this Monika person would have been a pointless exercise in futility. A realization that, like a weather forecast announcing an oncoming storm, did fairly little to assuage her unease.   
The mention of cake, on the other hand, did considerably better in that aspect, and for all involved, judging by the prolonged  _ oooh _ emitted by a starry-eyed Sayori.

“Where did you buy it? I don’t think I recognize the box…”

Which, for a connoisseur of every pastry shop within the entire city block like Sayori, only heightened her sense of anticipation. Monika made no effort to hide her delight - whether because of the excited girl’s inability to sit still on her chair, or the impending betrayal of the latter’s expectations, would have been anyone’s guess. With a fairly good chance that either possibility could have been wrong, red herrings hiding the real sentiment hidden beneath that satisfied smile.

“Nowhere. The Cooking Club owed me some favors, and since I felt like giving a warm welcome to our newest member...”   
“Still undecided!” Natsuki was quick to point, the words almost tripping out in a garbled mess.   
“Right. To welcome our  _ prospective _ club member, a cake sounded like a pretty good idea… Especially when taking in consideration what our cute little birdie told us about her friend’s sweet tooth.”

A blur of pink hair substituted Natsuki’s face when she turned it at the speed of disbelief. Sayori, who sat to her right, tried to back away and found her way out blocked by her chair. The desperate plea of her jumpy gaze met with a clearly bemused Monika, and a Yuri who had found herself suspiciously busy playing with a lock of her long hair. Left alone to fend off a fearsome enemy, Sayori had no choice other than to rely on her least likely allies: her left and right palms, held up to apologetically surrender, and maybe enhance the acoustics of the girl’s awkward, manufactured giggle.   
It didn’t work very well, judging by the fact that had Natsuki’s lips puckered any further, they would have separated from her rabid chihuahua face.

“What’d you tell ‘em exactly, Sayori?”   
“That… you’re a very good friend whom I cherish and love?”   
“Okay. Now how about a real answer?”

A whisper from the contraried girl’s left told her, in Yuri’s nearly inaudible voice, that  _ she  _ **_did_ ** _ say that… _ it did very little for Sayori’s case, but it did cause Natsuki to shut her eyes and attempt to squeeze the exasperation from her face with a firm, resigned grip of her trembling fingers.

“You… you incorrigible cupcake.”

Sayori’s smile: restored. Yuri’s desperate attempt to stifle a bout of uncharacteristic giggling by hiding it behind a fistful of blue hair: barely sufficient. Monika: bearing witness to it all with a look of wistful enjoyment - in other words, just being herself.

“Okay, everyone!”

Attention gravitated around Monika’s raised index as was likely predicted, further confirmed by her appeased smile. It would have been akin to a Pavlovian response, hadn’t Natsuki herself shot a sideways glance from behind the hand still plastered on her face, with the subsequent surprise that came with finding herself lured in just like that.

“Let’s submit our judgement to the cake. I don’t think you’ll have much of a reason to complain to Sayori, if it turns out that it’s delicious - and believe me, the Cooking Club has yet to disappoint me so much as once.”

It went without questioning that Natsuki was as human as one gets. This meant, among other things, that her ears lacked the ability to perk upwards when picking up certain particularly promising noises. With that said, the slight, imperceptible twitch that spread from her round ears to the rest of her minute body compensated rather well, as far as blatant expressions of surging excitement went.   
Her posture straightened almost immediately afterwards, and if her tiny fingers grabbed onto her side of the desk’s edge, it was only because the closest alternative was a box filled with delicacies, surrounded by too many pairs of gazes ready to judge her sinful actions to go through with them.

“Well, it’s not like we can just let a perfectly good cake go to waste or anything.”

Never words so magical had dispelled the lock on a more delicious treasure, and in so tsundere a manner. Any further ado could finally be done away with: Monika’s hands reached for the package with a deliberate slowness in her movements that tortured the soul and suplexed the hungriest palates. The girls’ eyes followed the lid as it calmly, gradually arose, giving glimpses of what laid underneath, until at last it was left bare for all to see and unabashedly drool about.

This time around, the  _ oooh _ came from three different voices, carrying with it ten times the excitement of its predecessor.

It was a cake. It  _ had _ to be a cake. The cylindrical shape implied as much, but something had to have happened at some point during the preparation, a sinister event of traumatizing proportions. The truth laid somewhere underneath the ludicrously thick stratum of chocolate that enveloped the whole thing far past its borders, having leaked to the point of giving the impression that the girls were looking at a particularly odd hat, rather than a delectable pastry.   
It felt alluringly inviting in the same way the scene of an accident draws passersby to witness its freshly brewed tragedy. Dieticians dreamed of that cake in their worst nightmares. Almost two decades of womanly self-care notions had warned the Literature Club members (plus a tentative one) against the evil temptations of something so ludicrously excessive.

To say that every girl in the room aside from a decidedly happy-looking Monika were at a loss would have been the understatement of the century. Their lips moved in strange ways, to mouth words in a language they’d never been taught. They were whispers from within - not the heart, but somewhere deeper, more visceral. It was the self-destructive call of stomachs, bellowed in complete disregard of every other organ’s attempt to warn against stepping over a line that permitted no return to the correct path.

A ghostly specter wearing the appalled visage of Yuri tore her eyes from the forbidden sight to set them on its unrepentant harbinger and her blameless smile. Such an act spoke at length of an untold inner strength - the other two seemed on the verge of collapsing from their sheer inability to compromise the reality they’d always known with the object clearly denying it in front of them.

“What… what is this, Monika?”   
“Cheesecake!”

Monika’s voice was a jubilant hymn that betrayed her composed façade. Her hands clapped once and stuck together as if in prayer, two made one in a fistful of delight held near an expression that could have only be described as ‘loving’. She beheld the cake like she would have done with her own child, and just like a mother, she was the only one who could verily see the beauty hidden beneath its indecipherable exterior.

“Made according to very precise directions by yours truly, of course. Don’t you just want to gobble it all down in a single gulp?”

A deafening silence was the only answer her eager words received, until Natsuki found it in herself to lean aside and address a befuddled Sayori in an entirely too audible whisper.

“Does this happen a lot here?”

It took a moment to register the question, and even longer for Sayori to wake up from her stupor, blink profusely, and wave her hand in a dismissive manner that felt entirely  _ not _ reassuring.

“It’s fine, it’s fine! Monika’s tastes can be a bit… different? But I’m sure the cake is still yummy enough!”

Encouraging, at least until she appended a meek, nearly inaudible  _ maybe _ at the end of her sentence after getting another look at the beautiful abomination.

“ _ Yummy _ won’t even begin to describe it, Sayori. But we can’t know for sure until we start digging on, so… here. The guest of honor should be the one to enjoy the first bite.”

It happened too fast for Natsuki’s scrambled perception to realize what was going on until it was far too late. The shiny reflection of her doubting face blinked back at her from within the spatula’s pristine blade that Monika was offering from across the desk. Panic diverted the pink-haired girl’s visage to her flanks, where she was welcomed by the traitorous sight of encouraging - and visibly relieved - nods. Her own features, when she caught their distorted silhouette on the utensil again, weren’t anymore reassuring for that matter.

Natsuki held her breath as she reached for the spatula and brushed fingers with Monika’s, unable to discern whether they were inhumanely cold, or if her mind had sacrificed its ability to perceive temperatures correctly in a desperate attempt to reroute some processing power towards more vital sectors of itself. The cake was where it had been, daring her to perform the deed and in doing so become the catalyst that would taint the four girls in unspeakably savory ways.   
Her nostrils dilated and contracted above her pursed lips. Until at last, with her knuckles losing color from her violent grip on the spatula, Natsuki forced her fallen eyelids open to reveal the mad fire of desperate abandonment blazing where her eyes once resided.

“Alright! Here goes nothing!”

A mistake. Cutting into that cake was nothing but a gigantic, horrendous blunder. The outermost layer parted with little resistance, and where the utensil paved the way, creamy goodness slipped in. The fine line between art and disaster was a mere millimeters of metal bathed in a viscous mess; Natsuki was a young warrior fighting her first skirmish, unable to bear the traumatizing brunt of her first kill. Her trophy was a broken shadow of its former self bleeding its contents out, connected to her by a tool shook vehemently by her tension. A lump in her throat went up and then down again, undecided as to whether it was going to be vomit, or excess saliva from a flooding palate.

Caught in a trance from the contradictory impulses firing off every neuron in her brain, Natsuki watched the small plate which an encouragingly smiling Monika was nudging in her general direction. Her limbs acted of their own accord, placing the sliced abomination atop its own pedestal and pulling it close enough for its sickeningly sweet scent to envelop the nose bearing down on it. She noted without truly understanding that where her fingers once held a spatula now resided a fork, with the substitution having likely taken place while she was too busy taking in the overwhelming Mysterious Cake X’s fragrance.

Natsuki gave it a tentative poke. She couldn’t tell whether the scream she heard in response came from it, or some remote corner of her brain begging her to stop before it would be too late. Alas, it  _ was _ too late: a sizeable morsel hovered in front of her, skewered by three shiny teeth and an equal number of gazes full of anticipation. It dripped a single droplet of dark brown cream, which splashed on the plate like the tears Natsuki couldn’t quite bring herself to cry. How could have she, when she couldn’t decide whether joy or utter terror were vying to open the floodgates in her tear ducts?

“H-here it goes.”

Lips parted after two or three attempts lost to skepticism, allowing fate to take its course - destination: a coating of weeping taste buds. Natsuki’s mouth closed, trapping the fork and the gift it brought along with it - and almost instantly, her eyes spread open, larger than the platter holding the cake.

“It’s…”

The other girls’ heads gravitated towards Natsuki, hungry for her verdict more than any pastry in the world. The fork slid out, leaving behind a complicated expression, a confused assembly of facial features struggling to express an emotion they’d never known. A tentative munch gave way to another, followed by several others at an increasingly rapid pace that grew frenzied until a moment later, when the swallowed chunk of pastry made its way down her throat.

The Literature Club waited with bated breath, surrounding their prospect member in a crossfire of wildly differing expectations. How was the cake? Bad?  _ Worse _ ? A harrowing affront to the very concept of pastries?! Or perhaps...

“Good. Good! It’s too friggin’ good! What gives...”

It was nothing short of criminal. No human being should have been culpable of concocting something so horrendously delicious, so tastefully ugly. Somewhere deep within Natsuki’s chest, a tiny crack forever marred her little chef’s heart… but she was too busy scarfing on cake to care.   
The example was set and promptly followed by the others. A prelude of trembling forks hesitatingly scraping against tiny porcelain plates soon gave way to a symphony of surprised delight, Monika’s chuckle resounding quietly in the background like an applause. Accompanying this feast for hungry stomachs was one for sore eyes: the sight of three girls still juggling their mismatched emotions of disbelief, doubt and delight while jeopardizing their weighing sessions one bite at a time.

 

“Glad to see that I was right. Although you certainly took your sweet time, Natsuki… six whole pages, I’d say.”

A statue vaguely resembling a pink-haired girl in the act of getting herself the third slice of cheesecake in a row stared back at Monika. She… she’d been caught in quite the momentum, alright. The interruption gave Natsuki the opportunity she and her line badly needed to slow down, which translated in spacing each bite with a couple more seconds between each to actually savor the chocobomination.

“Six whole what now?”

Sayori came to the rescue, dismissively waving her hand to stall for the time she needed to finish swallowing a chunk of cake bigger than her mouth had accounted for.

“Phew… Like, in a book. I mean, it’s a thing Monika does. She just, sort of reads the atmosphere and imagines how stuff that happens would be written in a book. You’ll get used to it eventually!”

‘Eventually’ roughly translating into the unspecified amount of time necessary to bring Natsuki’s arching brow down enough notches to wipe away her less than convinced expression.

“Riiight. You sure that’s just not ‘cause you’re  _ that _ bored from running a club about books?”   
“Daff’ wude!”

No, Monika’s teeth hadn’t fallen off from the sheer shock of receiving Natsuki’s tactless jab. In fact, she wasn’t even the one who had spoken in that muffled, goofy-sounding voice. The guilt lay elsewhere, in the hands and stuffed mouth of a dark-haired girl who looked like an indignant squirrel too busy glaring at crude pink-haired humans to empty the exquisite contents of her puffed out cheeks.

It took Yuri a couple of indignant blinks to realize that attention in the room had turned entirely on her and the piece of cake jutting out of her pursing lips. And it was around the third time her eyelids fell and rose again that realization showed her the shattered remains of her reputation, which looked suspiciously like the chocolate crumbs raining from her mouth onto the emptied plate. The three other girls watched in a mixture of pity and genuine awe as she made good use of her hair to create a makeshift curtain, with a trembling hand adding coverage to the front while still holding onto a quivering fork. Some muffled munching noises later, Yuri’s face had resurfaced with its delicate proportions restored: the urge to clap at her magical Cheesecake Disappearing trick was harder to swallow for the others than her own oversized bite. Clearing her throat at that point was like adding a cherry on top of a dumpster fire in an attempt to put it out - cute and earnest though it was, the damage had already been done. But  _ damn _ if Yuri didn’t have enough fruits in her basket to try anyway.

“Like I was saying… that was rude. You may mock us and our passions all you want, but at least we have the basic decency to respect our peers.”

Natsuki’s mouth opened to retort and ended up housing nothing aside from empty air. The weight of Yuri’s glare bore on her and the hand holding another forkful of cheesecake that felt entirely unmerited. The sweet scent mingled with the bitter aftertaste of a scolding that she couldn’t dismiss just like that, and left her at a loss for words that Sayori panickedly attempted to compensate for.

“It was a joke! She didn’t put that much thought into it, that’s all!”   
“Either way, even you must admit that it was in poor taste, Sayori.”

Yuri’s voice was a soft-spoken blade that cut across arguments with graceful competence. It was a quiet indignance far louder than any unbridled expression of fury, and it did its job remarkably well: Sayori had little to do other than to look at Natsuki with a sullen expression that seemed to desire nothing more than to apologize in her stead.

But that wouldn’t have been right. Isn’t that so, Natsuki?

“Don’t bother, Sayori. I guess that was kinda uncalled for… No, okay, it totally was.”

Her hands joined solemnly in front of her, and of Monika’s expressionless face. Natsuki bowed her head out of shame, but that wasn’t all of it. She could easily understand if the club president hadn’t taken so well to a stranger belittling her; she might not have liked it, but Natsuki was at least used to witnessing the many ways Sayori’s facial features could express distress; no, it was Yuri’s the glacial mask of disdain that she couldn’t bear to see. Disappointment clung to her traits like a coating of awkwardly splashed paint that truly did not suit their intrinsic beauty. So refined a visage, utterly wasted on such an ugly emotion…   
It was a veritable  _ shame _ which Natsuki could not stand to witness for a second more.

“Sorry if I offended you. I promise I’m gonna try extra hard not to sound like a bitch from now.”

From behind her cover, Natsuki opened one the eyes she’d squeezed shut to spy on Monika’s reaction. Her inability to read anything on that deadpan wall was anything but reassuring. Already she could envision one of Monika’s indexes, straight like an arrow pointing at the door, bringing to a pathetic close this brief excerpt in both of their lives. Most importantly, though - farewell, dear cake… you were delicious, and would be dearly missed.

Or not? Was that angle going up - and wait, the other one too! There was no mistake… yes, yes! It was a smile! Had trouble been averted after all?!

“I wasn’t offended in the slightest, Natsuki. But I will still accept your apology since it was pretty droll.”

Natsuki and Sayori’s relieved sighs came in unison, escorted by Monika’s chortle. The sole sour note came a bit late from the remaining member of that improvised band, who settled for a deep breath of somewhat satisfied resignation.

“You could have put the fork down, at the very least.”

Yuri’s half-lidded gaze met with Natsuki’s after she’d looked with entirely made-up dumbfoundedness at the utensil still stuck between her praying fingers. There wasn’t a single speck of innocence in the latter’s grin, which soon gave way to an air of smugness that had Yuri wondering about the reason behind it.

“Yeah? Well, it’d be easier to take you lecturing someone more seriously, if you wiped your mouth first.”

The odd statement propelled Yuri’s digit to her lip, from which it came out smeared with the obvious remains of her previous morsel. Although, from the girl’s reaction to her discovery, it might as well have been blood. A napkin managed to wipe away the proof of her shame, but not the shower of barely hidden smiles all around her.

“Leaving that aside, Natsuki… I suppose that if you truly wanted to offer an apology, joining the club would be a very much welcome way of doing so.”

There it was again: that look dripping with subtle, unfathomable intentions, underlined by the barely perceptible curve of a smirk right above intertwined fingers like a tender throne.   
Sayori had said before that Natsuki would eventually grow accustomed to Monika’s quirks. That gulp-inducing pose seemed constructed for the purpose of making her think otherwise, which was why she felt tension leave almost as soon as it had taken her over, when she saw the expression relax into a more recognizable form of bemusement.

“Buuut I’d rather not demand that of you, no. The choice is still up to you - even if I would love for nothing more than having you with us.”

It was as pleasant an offer someone could have given to a person who had spent her entire time in that room dismissing what went on inside it. Natsuki sunk into her chair with her head tilted aside. A slice of cake still resided on her plate, but when the fork came to rest on her lip, it was empty. She merely tapped at the puckered flesh a couple of times, after which she interrupted her quiet exam of Monika’s amiable gaze. Talk about an exercise in futility.

“I don’t get it. I thought you would’ve realized by now that I fit in here like scallops in a crepe.”

“Does that mean you’ve tasted them?” was Monika’s prompt response. It took Natsuki aback as much as it did the other two sitting at her side. But, most importantly, it left an opening that the Literature Club’s president was all too eager to fill with an ulterior verbose barrage.

“You haven’t, mh? How can you say for sure what the result would be? For all you know, there might be an undiscovered treasure trove of deliciousness lying beyond your prejudices. But, let’s say for instance that it  _ did _ taste as bad as you thought. Wouldn’t you come to appreciate those familiar flavors that you know and adore all the more than before?”   
“I… guess so?”   
“Yep! That’s why I think you’d be the perfect scallop to our club’s crepe!”

Natsuki was beginning to understand that any concept filtered through Monica’s mouth came out covered in at least three different layers of ambiguity. Offering a thread to follow across her labyrinthine logic was less merciful than it was necessary to avoid losing her interlocutors before they’d come to understand the meaning of her words.

“Let’s put it in another way, Natsuki. We’ve all become aware of how different your tastes and opinions differ from the rest of us.  _ That _ is precisely what would make you an ideal sounding board for the club. Bouncing off ideas in a stable environment is the perfect recipe for an enjoyable peace… or for tiresome stagnation. We need someone to keep us on edge! To criticize! Debate! Complain, even! A point of view able to see what we would never be able to perceive if left to ourselves… it’s the crucial component that the Literature Club sorely lacks. And it could be you, Natsuki.”

It could have been her, Natsuki, the girl staring ahead with a bamboozled expression pierced atop a hanging jaw. She was about sixty percent sure of having understood, and two-hundred percent overwhelmed by the sheer absurdity of it all.

“Sooo… like, you  _ want _ me to spout mean stuff at you?”   
“More or less, yes.”   
“Are you one of those? You know. A masochist…?”   
“That’s not something I can answer so willy-nilly.”

The sight of Monika holding her visage and squirming all over with a dangerously blissful smile plastered on her face did the exact opposite of assuaging Natsuki’s doubts, to say the least.

“O-okay, hold your horses! Remember that I still haven’t decided if I’m gonna join you or anything!”   
“That is true.”

It was clear by the speed with which she returned to her previous - and decidedly more appropriate - state that, unlike Yuri, Monika had long since capped her Composure Recovery Rate stat.

“I have a hunch that tells me you wouldn’t regret it, however. In fact, I think you’d come to enjoy it as much as we do, if not even more.”

Alright, that made Natsuki grin, and it was quite the large one at that. Her head shook lightly while she stabbed the portion of cake she had left and tore a large chunk off it. She watched it rotate as she moved the fork with her fingers, a squirming animal hopelessly cornered - kind of like Monika’s proposal, only a tad more palatable.

“You’ve got optimism by the bucketfuls, I’ll give you that. I’d almost end up believing you, if I didn’t know any better.”   
“Would you like to bet on it then?”

Natsuki’s eyebrows jumped like fish hooked on the bait which Monika had set on a hook far less rounder than her mischievous smile.

“You may join our meetings as long as it will take you to decide whether to join the Literature Club or not. If you do, I will have gained a wonderful new member, which means it will have been my victory.”

A pair of arms crossed in front of the pink-haired girl. The one sitting across from her withstood being sized up along her resolve without the slightest sign of faltering.

“That’s pretty convenient. And if I don’t join your happy little brigade?”

Monika’s shoulders arose only to fall immediately afterwards. Her hands presented the Mystery Cheesecake X, or what of it remained on the open box in the middle of the desk.

“I’ll ask the Cooking Club for another cake just for you… Although if you ask me, it would be little more than a consolatory gift for a loss suffered by us both. Still! What do you think, Natsuki? Care to take me on?”

The challenge lay lingering between the two contestants and their witnesses, its physical herald the outstretched hand of Monika. Natsuki could see it: the a weight carried within that palm which defied its lithe appearance, and the meaning of the invitation it offered.   
Deceptively alluring, like the illusion of a choice where the outcome had already been decided by fate. Unfair, but was that it? The one to take the initial step in that classroom had been Natsuki. The true bet she’d waged against herself and, in a sense, lost in that exact moment. The instant that coincided with the first sight she’d gotten of the girl sitting besides her.

Looking to her left, Natsuki locked gazes with Yuri. The dark-haired girl’s eyes were flooded with hesitation that far exceeded the smaller one. Monika’s words had obviously influenced her in a way that kept her from further protesting Natsuki’s eventual joining of the club, if only for the time being. The sensation of each other’s hands was still fresh on their respective palms, along with a promise that had faltered too soon to lend it any credibility. And yet… yet, there was that remote, minuscule possibility, that chance which resided at the far end of a realm of feasibility.   
That the risk could be worth it. That beyond their gripes and the clash of inconciliable differences, they could find an unexpected bridge that would let them meet as equals of sorts, and discover the wonders within their opposing sides.   
The unmistakable allure of the unknown equally frightened and tempted them with the promise of novelty.

Sayori, to Natsuki’s right, nodded as if her life depended on it, one of her inciting fists still holding onto her fork and the morsel stabbed on its sharp end. Silly girl! Hadn’t she made it evident enough what her stakes in the matter were, after all those weeks spent incessantly nagging her riotous friend?   
Hers was the last, cute push that sent Natsuki’s hand to meet the hold of Monika’s. The two shook hands with grins that betrayed no lack of hesitation on either side… well. Maybe just a bit on Natsuki’s.

“Good luck then, prez. You’re gonna need heaps of it.”   
“You calling me that already means I won’t need that much to begin with.”   
“Heh! Pretty cheeky for a book nerd.”   
“A book nerd  _ prez _ , you mean.”

The handshake was broken by Natsuki to reach for the last remaining bit of cake she had left and stuff her still smirking face with it. Ah… to think that all she had to do to get herself another of these would be biding her goodbye to this place! But she had to play this straight and give them a chance. She owed Sayori at least that much… and to her curiosity too, for that matter.   
It was the latter that pushed her pupils until she could spy Yuri in the corner of her sight. Contrary to the happy noises emitted by a beaming Sayori, the girl had merely turned her focus to her sweet portion, her expression entirely focused on making sure that each bite would be an overly pondered affair to avoid her previous blunder. How cute… less funny than seeing her panic with her mouth stuffed, unfortunately.

_ Clap. _

A noise that had been quick to become familiar only in its second iteration. The tolling of a bell, which this time did not even leave time for attention to gather towards it.

“Okay, everyone! That’s enough dilly-dallying, I’d say. Let’s clean up and begin with today’s activities. Oh, speaking of which… Yuri?”

The addressed girl, the fork still sticking out of her lips, turned her head to find Monika’s hand on her shoulder, and an expectant smile ready to spell trouble.

“I will be leaving Natsuki in your care for this session. I’m sure the both of you will have  _ plenty  _ of fun reading together.”

The sweet flavor of chocolate spread lazily across Yuri’s frozen tongue without her truly tasting it. She couldn’t notice that, right next to her, Natsuki’s eyes were blinking in unison with hers as their minds raced on different courses to reach the same conclusion, and produce a flat, semi-muffled chorus of  _ huh? _ ’s.


	5. Drunkard's Dilemma

“So… am I gonna have to keep staring at your back for much longer?”

Yuri’s silence lent some pretty convincing credit to the possibility. The accumulated weight of two different promises to behave pressed a sigh out of Natsuki’s chest, while simultaneously stifling the increasing urge to tell the other girl to  _ get this done with already. _ She turned around on the chair for the upteenth time, resting a pouty cheek against fingers that had already grown numb from their impatient tapping. It wouldn’t be long before the remaining set of five would join them on the opposite side.   
The first two minutes were admittedly bearable. With Monika and Sayori already busying themselves with reads of their own, Natsuki was left free to witness Yuri’s thorough exam of the Literature Club’s inventory with unabashed impunity. Exactly  _ why _ her gaze felt so enthralled by the sight of that long mane of dark hair, which swayed ever so slightly whenever the girl moved from the end of a line of books to the beginning of another sitting on a different scaffold, she wasn’t quite sure. Her rationale’s attempt to justify these attentions could only come up with the decidedly unconvincing explanation that Natsuki was just  _ that _ bored. Which was true, and had become increasingly so with each minute passing by… but still. Did she really have no other alternative than staring intensely at a girl too busy perusing book titles to notice?

Wait, what was she even thinking in the first place?!

The third minute was an exercise in futility, as Natsuki spent it trying to divert her focus somewhere else before, inevitably, realizing that her eyes would find their way back to Yuri’s lean shoulders. Just in time to catch a glimpse of her features, of the contemplative intensity that tugged them from one bound spine to the next.   
It unnerved her. And the fact that she felt unnerved about it, in turn, unnerved Natsuki. This weak side of hers that craved attention stolen by an inanimate object. The booming echo of her heartbeats filling her head whenever she could meet the corners of those eyes, so genuinely enraptured in a way Natsuki couldn’t believe humanly possible.   
She couldn’t help but wonder what it would have felt to be looked at by eyes like those, instead of the resentful gaze that she’d been provoking time and again with her lack of tact. And every time she realized such thoughts were sprouting outside of her control, the tapping of her fingers on the desk would grow more frantic, in a desperate effort to drone out all this nonsense.

Alright, alright. Five minute mark. She had to calm down before the sixth clocks in or she’d be starting to think some  _ reaaally _ weird thoughts if this kept up.

She was bored. Yeah, it was as simple as that. Boredom and silence had squeezed her patience dry and a good portion of her common sense along with it. She wanted attention, yes! But only because giving it to Natsuki was the task that Monika had appointed Yuri with, no more, no less. It was Monika’s fault, see! Miss Club Prez and that stupid idea of hers…

_ “If it’s about raw passion for literature, then none of us can hold a candle to Yuri. Spend a few minutes pouring over a book with her and her bookish aura will be bound to rub off on you. I can guarantee as much, Natsuki. So, what do you say? Think you’ll be up for the task, Yuri?” _

A firm  _ no _ was the answer that Natsuki had expected and hoped for at once. Which was why she couldn’t quite understand her current predicament, in light of her less than stellar introduction to her bootleg literature teacher. In an alternate universe where things made sense and events followed the natural pattern of cause and effect, a pair of crossed arms and obstinate refusal should have constituted the entirety of Yuri’s opinion on the matter. Weird girl…

Guess they had that in common, if nothing else.

“Okay.”

_ Not okay! _

Natsuki caught her tongue before it could let loose with her spontaneous retort to the other girl’s quiet voice. The problem being that she used her teeth to do so in the spur of the moment: unsurprisingly, the expression on Yuri’s face was suitably puzzled when she turned to see the smaller girl covering her mouth while wincing all over.

“Is everything alright?”

Hardly. But Natsuki could appreciate the distraction provided by the sudden rush of stimuli, so she waved a dismissive hand and nodded at the book held between Yuri’s hands.

“Decided on one already?” Pity that an aching tongue didn’t quite help conveying the sarcasm in the last word. “Hope you picked me a good one, at least.”

The beginnings of a nod pulled Yuri’s head back, only for it to fall over in the opposite direction as she held the book up for further scrutiny. The less than confident look in her eyes wasn’t exactly reassuring.

“Hey hey, I’m just joking!” Natsuki hurried to say, not quite looking forward to spending another five minutes lost in a numb reverie. “I thought this was supposed to be the Literature Club, not the Let’s Stare At Nothing Until We Die Of Boredom one.”

Hesitation sent Yuri’s pupils pinballing between the well-preserved cover and Natsuki’s reluctantly pleading face. A quick taste of her lower lip finally convinced her to surrender with a nod and hold the volume out like an offering to a tiny, easily angered goddess.

“You’re right, sorry. I just had to make sure… If I am to make a good impression--I mean, picking something out for someone whose tastes you don’t know very well is no easy feat.”

“You... could have just asked me, you know.”

Had Yuri’s eyes been mouths, their blinking would have spelled a quiet, dumbfounded  _ ‘Could I?’ _ It was only fair for Natsuki’s ‘ _ yep’ _ to be conveyed in the special Morse dialect of her gravely nodding head. Just to be sure, she replayed her own words inside her head, only to discover that… yeah, nothing wrong-sounding about what amounted to plain ol’ common sense. So what, then? Was this girl merely playing off her own attempt at pettily getting away with revenge for the earlier bout of bickering?

From underneath a suspiciously furrowed brow, Natsuki tried to penetrate Yuri’s apparent façade of confusion with a piercing glare. She might as well have made gurgling sounds by sucking the wet bottom of a cup with a straw, however. The taller girl should have elevated the act of lying to an art to display such genuine-looking befuddlement. Which sounded just as likely as someone being unable to fathom the most basic of social norms, or as Natsuki’s willingness to believe that this demure bombshell had somehow been avoiding for her entire life the attentions of people who no doubt swarmed around her on a constant basis.

Yeah, sure.

A shrug swept the issue under the plain rug of a simple explanation - that Yuri had merely left her head in the inky clouds of the literature stacked behind her - and was followed by Natsuki reaching for the book still being held towards her. Indexes and thumbs clutched its rigid corners as if it - along with the other pair of delicate-looking hand grasping it from the opposite end - were wont to crumble from mere contact with a heretic non-reader like her, bringing it closer for examination.

“ _ The Little Prince _ , huh. It sounds… fable-ish.” murmured Natsuki, with minus one attempts made at hiding her skepticism. “And the cover looks like it was drawn by a toddler.” She looked up with the intensity of a lion desperately seeking a reason not to devour the trainer timidly crackling their whip at her. “All that time spent wrecking your brains and your conclusion is that I’ve got the brains of a child.”

That was no question. It was a statement flatter than the tone of its delivery, flatter even than the confine drawn by Natsuki’s lowered eyelids.  _ Insulted _ did not even begin to describe how she felt. The sole reason she hadn’t snapped and made a print of Yuri’s face on the book’s cover was her sheer inability to fathom how a human being could secrete such ludicrous amounts of venom from their actions. There was no doubt at this point that she was being played with. There wasn’t, right?

The apology written all over Yuri’s visage begged to imply otherwise. The fingers clutched in front of her chest, frozen in a seeming struggle to grasp a heart that had been stabbed with a cold blade, were a flimsy barrier against an unrelenting barrage of mistrust. The reflection of the childish scribble depicted on the book’s cover lingered over her glazed eyes, as if they willed to cradle the innocent figure away from the trappings of a cruel misunderstanding.

“I didn’t...”

Yuri’s lips hung open until she shut them close, and her eyes along with them. Her shoulders heaved along with her chest as she took in a long breath, and the vestiges of her crumbling patience along with it. There was a passionate solemnity about her display which filled Natsuki with an almost dreadful sense of anticipation, shutting down any impulse she might have had to further press her accusations. Her body, when Yuri released her intense gaze on it, straightened up like that of a soldier hearing the click of the execution squad’s guns.

“Belittling you wasn’t my intention, Natsuki. On the contrary -  I want to earn your respect. And if not for me, at the very least, for literature… I chose that book precisely because I wanted your first impression to be a good one.”

With gentleness pushing them forward, Yuri’s hands reached for the top half of the book. Fingers held onto the thick border while those from the opposite limb bestowed a kindly caress on the simplistic design of the cover. She was smiling, her lineaments relaxed in a sea of welcoming comfort; to Natsuki, who still had the lower half in her grasp, the scene appeared like that of a mother lulling her child to sleep after a bad, bad nightmare.

“This is a book that many, many people across the world, children and adults alike, have loved for more than fifty years. I am one of them. Which is why I’ll ask you… would you please give it a chance?”

The question lingered between the two girls as they both held onto the book from opposite ends, forming a bridge that let one’s desire come across and meet the other, beneath an exchange of gazes more meaningful than what words could have hoped to convey.

A few desks away, Monika and Sayori were peeking at the scene above the edge of books that had long since lost their attention, their enraptured gazes bristling with anticipation.

Unaware of it all, Natsuki held steadfastly to the book, like Yuri kept doing across from her. And in that mirrored sight, in that flimsy, collaborative effort, she could almost spot the seeds of mutual understanding as they finally began to blossom, for the first time since she’d set foot in that classroom. The feeble tug she gave to the volume was her own way of testing this theoretical realization; the release of Yuri’s hold, an almost assured confirmation. Raising gain the cover to her eyes, it appeared to be bathed in a completely different light, and that alone felt like a convincing proof of the other girl’s argument.

Natsuki couldn’t stop herself from grinning, nor from shaking her head sideways. But when her stare met Yuri’s, it did so holding no trace of malice nor a remnant of mistrust.

“That passion of yours is the real deal, huh? Alrighty. I guess this means I’ll have to give this super-duper-wowzer of a book a sincere spin, after all.”

In stark contrast with the dark hue of her hair, Yuri’s face lit up like the moon against a tranquil night’s sky.

“Then…!”

“Let’s get reading, cap’n.”

The mock salute looked doubly silly with the book’s edge bumping against Natsuki’s forehead. In the brunt of that trivial impact, she could see the worry on Yuri’s face crushed almost entirely. Unbeknownst to her, the same relief had washed over the two other people spying on her shenanigans.

“Nooow then…”

The book now sat in front of Natsuki, laid on its back with the front cover’s design staring back at her. The little person, depicted standing atop a planet the size of a house, with his small bowtie and green shirt, still didn’t seem all that princely to her. A silly thought struck her when she tried to pinpoint what it  _ did _ remind her of… a milkman. An oddly alien-looking parody of those people seen in American shows, with white dots for eyes and yellow hair in dire need of a comb. A Super Saiyajin milkman prince! This was bad. She hadn’t gone past the cover and already her expectations had grown too big. There was no way that the actual story could be so outrageously quirky!

Natsuki stifled a giggle. The sound it made was suspiciously loud and… screechy? No, wait, that wasn’t her. The source laid elsewhere, to her right specifically. Natsuki, still clutching her mouth, turned to see the chair that had been placed beside hers, right under the girl sitting on it. Well, that explained it!

Hold on.

“Wuh?”

The muffled noise sounded vaguely like a question. It took Yuri by surprise: her head sunk slightly between her shoulders, one of which would have been brushing against Natsuki, was she not leaning so far back that it was a wonder gravity hadn’t done its job yet by shoving her on the floor.

“Is there a problem with the book, after all?”

Natsuki shook her head with an accompanying  _ muh-huh _ , at which point she realized that freeing her lips from her own grasp would have greatly improved her communication prowess.

“What’re you doing here?”   
“...I’m a member of the Literature Club.”   
“No, genius! I mean  _ here _ !”

Following the trail pointed by Natsuki’s fingers brought Yuri’s eyes to an unexpected destination: her own lap. They came back from the trip with a souvenir - a sincerely puzzled look.

“I am... sitting.”   
“Yeah! For what?”   
“To read the book.”   
“Which one?”

With the slow movements of someone held at gunpoint by an asylum escapee, Yuri reached for the volume she had so painstakingly chosen among others and tapped on its nearest corner exactly once. Natsuki’s index switched targets to the very same book, asking for confirmation with her jumpy eyebrows. She didn’t seem entirely pleased with Yuri’s affirmative nod.

“Why this one?”   
“Uhm… I told you just a moment ago, didn’t I?”   
“I know you did, but what I’m saying is…!”

Pinching the bridge of her nose helped Natsuki take her time to calm down, along with providing a convenient cover for the light hue of pink that from her hair seemed to be spreading to her face.

“Can’t you just, nab another copy and read it by yourself?”

The buds of comprehension were finally begin to bloom over Yuri’s face, uprooting any trace of disorientation that still lingered on it. Her fingers instinctively caught a long strand of hair, attempting to provide a solid enough hook for her lowered gaze’s inability to sustain Natsuki’s. Which it wouldn’t have needed to do, seeing as the latter was too busy burning holes into one of the desk’s corners.

“It’s the only one we have. I thought, how do I put it… since it’s a group activity and you might have some questions about the book, it would make sense to do it together…”

_ Do it together _ . Quietly murmured words bounced around Natsuki’s head like bouncy ball tossed inside a pottery shop by a particularly mischievous brat.  _ Do it together. Do it together. Do WHAT together. _

When Natsuki regarded her hand, shortly after brushing its palm over her visage with all the strength it could muster, she was disappointed to find that her features hadn’t been peeled away. The sheer awareness of her own ridiculously flustered expression was the kind of burden she didn’t feel like shouldering right now - or  _ ever  _ for that matter.

“If it’s too much of a bother…”   
“It’s not! It’s not, honest. Let’s do it. Read! Let’s, let’s read it. The book. That must be read.”

In a mad dash to run away from her stumbling words, Natsuki attempted to reach the cover and let a sea of ink drown the rapid spread of awkwardness. How weird, however. She recalled it being a tad harder than that. In fact, there was very little book-like about the squishy, warm response her digits received from each pressure they kept applying. Why, hadn’t she known better, this would have almost resembled…

“Uhm...”

Natsuki could clearly see the strain painted all over Yuri. Even in spite of the jumbled state of thoughts that kept running anywhere but where she wanted them to, her discernment was intact enough to recognize the veritable effort it was seemingly taking the discomforted-looking girl not to avert her gaze. The ultimate failure of said effort made it all the more unbearable to watch - especially because to Natsuki, it felt like peeking into a mirror that showed her immediate future.

Again, without success, Natsuki tried to turn the page only to feel a soft, trembling resistance.

“A-anything wrong?”

She might as well have tried to douse a fire with kerosene, and the results would have been less disastrous. Yuri’s head was tilting like a tower kept from falling over only by the thinnest strand of rapidly depleting willpower. Natsuki could feel the girl’s unbridled shivers, transmitted through the flimsy touch of their respective shoulders… and another spot, which inexplicably ended where her own fingers began. The same digits that for the last few moments had been trying their damnedest to spread that book open. Why,  _ why _ was she unable to perform so basic an action? Why did the supposedly hard corner of a stack of paper feel so pleasantly malleable? And what was it exactly that Yuri kept looking at, which she couldn’t bring herself to just mention?

There was an easy method for Natsuki to answer all those questions. It involved shifting her focus to the specific corner of the book which Yuri had grasped, after having seemingly gotten the same idea as her. Had she done so, then Natsuki would have taken notice of the fact that what she was so eagerly massaging wasn’t the cover, but Yuri’s fingers.

_ Ah. _

They were both staring. Mutually, painfully aware of the fact. Their eyes were transfixed by the sight of that inconsequentially microscopic slice of universe where their bodies were connected, and they were regarding it as if their lives had been irredeemably contaminated in some way they couldn’t quite fathom. It was the kind of blunder that shouldn’t have lasted longer than a second, an utterly forgettable sequence of frames destined to be lost under a pile of the many others that formed the movie of their daily life. It should have been simple as that.

‘Should’ being the key word here.

Time, the cruel little teaser it was, eventually resumed its job. It was Yuri who noticed first by pulling her arm away, and her gaze away along with it. The smoothness of skin and the delicate firmness of flesh gave way to the dull sharpness of bound paper within the perceptions of Natsuki’s fingertips. Somehow, the meeting of her initial sensorial expectations felt more disappointing than anything else. She retreated her hand almost as an afterthought, clutching the hand to her chest like as if it was carrying a wound freshly carved into it by the volume’s edge - or to preserve the lingering remnants of the earlier sensation, perhaps. The indulgent whims of Natsuki’s instincts had long since been eluding her.

“Sorry.”

Yuri’s voice was a barely audible whisper. It nonetheless rumbled inside Natsuki’s head with the force of a thunderstorm.

“No, this one’s on me. So… sorry ‘bout it.”   
“It’s fine. Just… a little mistake, right?”   
“Yeah.”

Small. Microscopic. Practically invisible to the eye. Nothing to make a fuss about, no?

The two girls turned in unison, and like mirror images of each other their hands lunged towards the same target, only to stop short of returning to the previous predicament. Trembling sets of digits lingered mere centimeters from touching one other, their owners’ hesitation immediately dragging them back.

“You’re the expert here, you do it.”   
“No, no, you’re the guest so I have to adjust to your pace, therefore…”   
“The book belongs to the club, a club member should do it!”   
“I’ll take responsibility, so by all means feel free to...!”   
“Gaah, together then!”   
“Together, yes!”

A pair of firm nods confirmed the girls’ synced resolves. Yes, they were going to open the  _ hell _ out of that book! What chances did a flimsy paperback have against the combined power of two determined high schoolers? Just you watch, printed paper! Behold, the colliding shadows of these two hands, shining with the awesome power of of of  _ waaait a moment _ , wasn’t there a gigantic flaw in this plan?!

To the surprise of nobody involved (and of the prying uninvolved, for that matter), Natsuki and Yuri once again almost dared touch one other, and once again they retreated their hands as if they’d been on the verge of dipping into a vat full of lava.

It was becoming glaringly apparent that at this rate, there wouldn’t be much reading left to be done by the end of the day. Which would have been perfectly fine, hadn’t the alternative been… whatever this farcical back and forth was supposed to be.

Good grief, enough!

“Why do I gotta do everything myself here?!”

Riding the high of a particular deja vu’s residual energy, Natsuki put an end to a beginning that had long overstayed its welcome by swiftly, with unnecessarily bold flair, flipping open the book. It was a violent gesture befitting of her, a marvelous way of taking the reins of the situation… a pity that the volume had spread open right in the middle of its total page count.

“...Let me take care of it.”

Natsuki, too flustered by the suddenness of her outburst and entirely too aware of how it had provided the unnecessary cherry to the futility-flavored pie that had been everything leading up to that moment, quietly nodded and let Yuri flip the pages back. Although, more than a nod, it was really little more than a paltry attempt to hide the scarlet hue of her cheeks.

“Like I said, I have already read this, so I will probably go faster than you. Take your time reading and move onto the next page at your own convenience.”   
“A’right.”

_ Just like a mother and child _ , was the thought unknowingly shared by Monika and Sayori, who had yet to flip even one page of their own reads.

“Here we go. Are you ready, Natsuki?”   
“You’re making it sound like we’re about to go bungee jumping or something.”

Yuri’s mouth hung open in its inability to retort. The brief, embarrassed chortle that came out instead was a cute admission of defeat, and a contagious one at that. And with just that exchange, it seemed as if the overbearing layer of awkwardness that had been oppressing them was finally beginning to dissipate: had it not been the case, it would have taken them less than a second to become overly conscious of the perfect coordination they had found by holding their respective side’s page in place… albeit only with the very tips of their indexes.

Of course, in a world governed by the cruelest of fates, harmony like this wasn’t allowed to last too long.

“‘Kaay. Let’s just skip over here and--”

Natsuki somehow managed to retreat her hand in time to save it from being guillotined onto the book by a karate chop. She turned to see a nonplussed Yuri’s eyes widening in real time right next to her. The sight told her instinct to shove down a nervous mouthful of saliva down her throat, lest it be left unclogged and free to whimper.

“What are you doing.”   
“I’m… turning the pages?”   
“But you did not read their contents.”   
“No… it’s just intro notes on stuff like the author. Nothing import--”   
“They’re very important!”

Natsuki wasn’t entirely sure whether to jump from sudden increase in the decibels of Yuri’s voice, or the pressure of the latter’s grip on her arm. She decided to settle for the inflamed passion on her guide’s face, which had long since closed in past the line of non-bashfulness.

“Only by knowing and understanding the author can we truly come to appreciate their works! The lives that shaped their thoughts in turn gave form to the ink with which they painstakingly dotted dozens upon dozens of pages! They selflessly gave us the precious byproduct of their imagination, their intimate thoughts laid bare, and for what? To be forgotten and be denied the gratitude we owe them for their efforts? Apologize!”   
“I-I’m sorry, Yuri! I didn’t--”   
“No, the author! Apologize to the author!”

The author, yes! Immediately! Just give her a moment to hastily look at the name printed on the cover. A  _ very _ long moment, since her arms were flailing about like an inflatable mannequin’s limbs in the face of a maelstrom.

“Okay, okay! I’m very sorry, mister… Antowhat? Anto One…? Do-san… Teguju… Teju…”

Yuri’s stern, cross-armed pose did not take long to gave out upon witnessing the gradual loss of intelligibility that Natsuki was suffering right in front of her. The girl was wobbling back and forth in a veritable struggle to maintain not only her equilibrium, but to keep the contents of her brain from spilling all over the place, in her desperation to pronounce a name that no pair of Japanese lips had been engineered by nature to pronounce.

“Okay! It’s okay Natsuki! I’m sure that monsieur Antoine would be satisfied with your apology! Please, your eyes are turning into spirals!”

A few seconds had to pass nonetheless for Natsuki to regain her bearings and ensure that whatever demon had possessed Yuri, it had gone away and left behind the reassuringly demure aura that suited her a lot better.

“Reading… is some seriously serious business, huh.”

Yuri did not comment, too busy playing with a strand of hair conveniently shielding most of her face from any forms of clear-headed post-traumatic judgement.

“It’s fine if you skip the introduction… just this once, at least.”

Natsuki waited anyway before completely flipping over the first of the few pages separating her from the true bulk of the volume. As if on cue, Yuri scooted ever so slightly closer so that she could have a better view. The vivid sensation of their shoulders pressing against one another stole the breath from Natsuki’s chest; timidly, after having been repeatedly shooed out, silence was finally ready to take back its rightful place within the room it belonged to.

It managed to last for all of a couple pages, at which point a simple endeavor like reading turned into a veritable labor of tenacity. Words describing things and thoughts were becoming increasingly tangled with the palpable sensations that Yuri’s closedness kept transmitting with her sheer presence.   
The sight of her hand, delicately handing over one page to Natsuki to finish turning by gripping the exact point where the paper still held some leftover warmth.   
The subtle pressure of Yuri’s arm against hers, shifting with each breath she took in and subsequently released.   
The subdued fragrance of her hair, with that enticing smoothness too temptingly close for comfort.   
It was a festival for the senses, unfairly realer than any concept that mere paragraphs could convey. And Natsuki found herself conflicted, between her  _ need _ to escape it and her  _ desire _ to keep indulging into it.   
_ This is the kind of person you can’t help admire _ , she reasoned with herself. There was some solace to be found in the cold logic which told her this was nothing but a form of envy. It gave these unquenchable feelings a soothingly recognizable form.   
It was logic, too, that suggested a solution to her present conundrum. A distraction: the oxymoronic salvation of her wavering focus.

“Man, nevermind a prince, this kid is a chump.”

Peeking to her side, Natsuki at first noticed exactly zero signs of Yuri acknowledging her words. Should she have repeated herself? That would have been awkward, so maybe better wait for the next… ah! Was that blinking? Yes, yes, she was looking, she was looking right back at her! Who could have said that human eyebrows could arch so high when expressing confusion?

“Mh? Excuse me, what did you say?”   
“The kid here, the Prince. He’s just letting this bratty rose lead him around like an obedient dog. Doesn’t he ever get fed up?”

It was a rhetorical question, barely worth pondering over. Which did not stop Yuri from doing exactly that, with her free hand arisen to her chin to boot. If nothing else, Natsuki had succeeded in distracting  _ both _ of them now.

“Well… she might sound mean, but that is because she is too shy to admit that she has to depend on the Little Prince to live. And the Little Prince, he loves his rose so very dearly he can see right through her harsh demeanor.”

Now it was the turn of Natsuki’s brow to cock upwards, sprung forth from the unexpected analysis proffered.

“So basically, the rose is a tsundere?”

The smile that eventually spread on Yuri’s lips, once she’d fully taken in the spunky girl’s interpretation of the facts, was the closest compromise her facial muscle could have found in response to something so simultaneously outrageous and bemusing.

“I guess you could say that.”   
“Ooh. So you  _ do _ know what a tsundere is.”

And bye bye smile. Yuri’s attempt to maintain her composure was a commendable failure that left her looking more bashful than she would have wished for.

“I-I do read a lot, after all.”

_ Manga too? _ But Natsuki limited herself to shaking her head with a grin. A possibility so far-fetched hardly begged asking about, especially now that she’d regained ahold of her emotions in the spur of the moment.

“Right, right. Well! Even all that said, this rose’s still too much of a butt. I bet the lil’ Prince will be sighing a big breath of relief, soon as he gets himself off his spinny rock and away from that bothersome flower.”

With her attention newly brought to the printed words in front of her, Natsuki couldn’t see the hint of mischief that flashed by the face of the girl sitting beside her, leaving behind the subtle curve of a wound where her lips once stood.

“Is that what you think, Natsuki?”

The pink-haired head bobbed up and down with utmost confidence.

“I sure do. Heck, I bet by the end that rose’ll be bawling her eyes--well, her  _ petals _ out, begging her little slave to come back.”

After reading a few more lines, Natsuki turned her head to see that Yuri was keeping silent, patiently waiting for the next page with the faintest trace of a smile.

“A-ha! Did I get it right? Maybe I really do have a penchant for this after all. No spoilers though! I want to savor the moment this shitter gets what’s coming for her.”

Natsuki’s loud cackle was the last noise to reverberate within the Literature Club’s room for a long while.

Until little less than two hours later, when the sound of ‘The Little Prince’ closed on the last page of its tale, and Yuri, her spirit nourished by the small feast it had been thoroughly enjoying, turned to her left with a blissful, short-lived smile.

“And that was it. What did you think of… Natsuki?!”

The addressed girl did not answer. It’s not that she did not want to - she simply  _ couldn’t _ . Between herself and a coherent sentence were a mound of feelings that had been mounting one printed word at a time, and the incessant flow of tears washing down her pathetically distraught face. Yuri put both of her shoulders in a firm grip and shook them, with seemingly no regards for the countless paragraphs that had earlier described the myriad difficult feelings the smallest contact had occasioned the two girls.

“Natsuki! Is something wrong? Do you--”   
“Iddis wwong!”

Yuri somehow managed to discern that the slurred mess which had tumbled its way out of Natsuki’s quivering mouth was supposed to sound like ‘ _ It is wrong!’ _ or something along those lines. It didn’t help her understand exactly  _ what  _ was wrong, but it was a start.

“O-okay, uhm, could you try to calm down a bit and tell me what’s afflicting you?”

Natsuki’s idea of calming down involved a long, prolonged sniff and using her uniform’s sleeve to wipe away the tears staining her face, so that the ones flowing out of her ruptured ducts could take their place. Her hands had balled up into tiny fists eating into the hem of her skirt; Yuri hoped she’d settle down before accidentally tearing away the whole thing. And, most importantly, before Yuri herself would lose her rapidly depleting composure - she was already having enough trouble keeping her hands still after releasing her grip on Natsuki’s arms. Having two people flail about in the same spot wasn’t going to help anybody, much less  _ themselves _ .

“That ending! It’s so damn sad! Stupid Prince, getting swindled by that stupid snake… what gives! There’s a sequel, right? There must be! One where the Little Prince gets to see his rose again, and everything’s back to like it was in the beginning...”

Natsuki’s voice eventually trailed off into a series of barely coherent mumblings, but they all seemed to reiterate the same statement: to  _ hell _ with that sad, sad ending.   
Compared with the ceaseless streams of complaints in front of her, Yuri was unable to find but a single word to so much as comment on what she was bearing witness to so closely. She had known Natsuki for a few hours, and within the first alone, the image of this peppy girl, with her scathing bluntness and a tendency to laugh in the face of all seriousness, had solidified itself inside her head like an immovable constant. The conviction that she’d seen all there was to see about the person called ‘Natsuki’ within those first few tense moments had already solidified itself, in spite of any risk of superficiality. That was how strongly she’d come off - and now there she was. A bawling mess, incoherently mumbling about the fictional protagonist of a children’s story and the injustice of his fate, a complete departure not only from her predicted reaction, but Yuri’s own expectations.

She had gotten a glimpse of something. A facet of this girl’s essence far more genuine than anything she’d shamelessly expressed before her mask had gotten such a visible crack. A fragment of what may have very well been a form of  _ purity  _ unbeknownst to her.

Yuri saw all that, and felt like apologizing. On behalf of the book’s author, of his blameless characters, but most of all, Yuri felt growing within her the compelling desire to make amends for her subconscious refusal to let Natsuki prove that she was more than what she made herself appear to be. An apology and, at the same time, an expression of gratitude for having been given that chance.

Because, she couldn’t stop herself from admitting, it was such an adorable sight.

Slowly, Yuri covered Natsuki’s clenched fists with her own palms, skin barely touching skin, a reassuring call to attention. The weeping girl, with the reluctant effort of a giant shouldering the weight of an entire mountain, raised her head to meet the sight of Yuri’s face. Had she been in any state to fish for words in the stormy sea of her mind, the one she would have used to describe the expression on the visage facing hers would have been ‘motherly’. Just looking at it seemed to clear most of the burden clogging the insides of her throat. It was the sort of expression with which someone could have promised you that the world isn’t such a bad place after all, and you would have been tempted to believe them.   
Natsuki decided that she liked that expression a lot.

“They’re fine, both the Prince and his rose. Think about the author, Natsuki. About the words he used to tell us about these characters, about their adventures, their thoughts… he may have mocked the drunken man, and the king with no subjects, and the geographer, but did he ever sound malicious, when he talked about the Prince, and how sincere his love for his rose was? What about the rose, who let her Prince go even as she had come to depend so much on him? The author loved these characters. And because of that, I am sure that in his mind, they were able to meet each other once again, on that little asteroid of theirs. So believe in the author, Natsuki. Trust that he gave them the happy end they deserve.”

Natsuki sniffed, again and again. It wasn’t until the dozen time that, with a raspy voice, she let out a quiet ‘really?’, to which Yuri promptly nodded. The sorrowful girl, mirroring the motion with her own head, pondered over those words, letting them carry away the complicated emotions that had provoked that shameless display, bit by bit. She wanted to believe. She really, really wanted that naive child and that vain flower of his to meet again. It was just a story, a tale made up by a man long dead. And now Natsuki understood perfectly the reason why Yuri had praised it so highly.

Isn’t that right, pair of shadows looming ominously behind our weepy child?

“Can I consider this my victory, or is the bet still up?”

Natsuki’s neck almost broke from the sheer speed with which she turned her head around. A glimpse of Monika’s thoroughly satisfied face was all she could see before an auburn blur enveloped her in a tight, warm embrace.

“Natsuki, you poor thing! It’s alright, it’s alright… I toootally feel you!”

It would have been easier to appreciate Sayori’s encouragement, was it not for the fact that   
1) she sounded far more desperate than Natsuki   
2) she was mere Pascals away from crushing Natsuki’s head between her arms and chest.

It was a truly appreciable effort, still!

“She’s being literal, by the way. Sayori was bawling a lot harder than you when she first read that book… and every time afterwards.”

Judging from the slight increase in pressure on Natsuki’s cranial zone, Sayori hadn’t particularly appreciated the outing of her less stellar moments in the Literature Club.

“We-we-well! Can you blame me for feeling sorry about the poor Prince? He just wanted to meet his rose and he… he...”

Somehow mustering up every ounce of strength left in her, Natsuki managed to free her head with an almost audible  _ pop _ . Her bloodshot eyes were dripping with resolution and still leaking a tear or two.

“He’s fine! He’s back on his asteroid and probably spends his days getting whipped around by that stupid rose of his. Right?”

Had there been more expectations in the look Natsuki gave Yuri, she would have expelled it in the form of a puppy-like tail, wagging back and forth in anticipation of the treat she was due. A puppy with a teary face and a runny nose that looked like a grinning mess.

Nobody could have kept a straight face in front of such a scene. None of the Literature Club members did, and Yuri even more so. She nodded like a teacher, with the patient smile she would have used to reward a particularly excitable, and sometimes troublesome, student of hers.

“Correct. Happily ever after.”

Clap!

It came with clockwork precision, the punctuation marking the upper limits of a climax. The call to attention set the differing spirits straight by giving them a common point to focus on, and that point was the ethereal smile above Monika’s joined hands.

“Okay, everyone! It seems that today we had a rather productive day in the Literature Club.”

The club president’s footsteps seemed to carry on louder than any other sound after being preceded by her clap, but it was merely the solemn silence lulling one to believe this was the case. She stopped next to Natsuki, holding the very much welcome offer of a tissue which the girl immediately snatched and made very loud use of.

“What do you think, Natsuki? Did you finally start to see some worth in those old, dusty books after all?”

Natsuki looked up, the tissue still pressed against her face along with her hands. Monika’s face all but said that her question was a rhetorical one. The pink-haired girl sniffed, blew her nose one last time, and then crumpled it with a reluctant pout.

“Maybe.”

That seemed to be enough to elicit an enthusiastic exchange of gazes between the actual club members, and another attempt on her life from Sayori by means of rib-crushing.

“Perfect! And now, to conclude today’s activities of the Literature Club, here’s everyone’s favorite - Monika’s Recommendation of the Day! The book I’m talking about this time is  _ If on a winter’s night a traveler _ , written by Italian postmodernist extraordinaire Italo Calvino. It’s a crafty kind of novel where the protagonist is none other than… you, the reader! The book does in fact open with a description of you, as you are about to read the very book you are holding… only for it to end at the first chapter. This leaves you very confused! No, not you, but the you in the book… and, at this point, I bet the you reading all of this must be feeling pretty dazed! The novel is in fact an original deconstruction of the very concept of novels, with each chapter alternating between the increasingly fantastical journey of an affectionate reader, and a series of beginning chapters, all of them written in wildly differing styles and genres, that never find a conclusion. It may be a book filled with beginnings, but it’s hardly a book for beginners! It’s the kind of read you will start to truly appreciate only after you’ve already put quite a number of books under your belt, so don’t wait anymore and get reading! Thus concludes today’s Monika’s Recommendation of the day.”

 

Dusk had set the sky outside the school ablaze. The setting sun lazily shone its light across the skyline, splashing against the silhouettes of the four girls just outside the entrance gates to paint the ground with their oblong shadows.

“See you next week then,  _ everyone _ .”

More than the sun rays, Natsuki felt Monika’s gaze burning into her with a gratingly tranquil implication. She met it with the most stubborn defiance she could paint her face with… but, as if it were made of wax, the resistance seemed to quickly melt off, leaving behind a faint outline of its former, tenacious self.

“You would like that, wouldn’t you?”   
“Me and the limited supply of favors owed to me by the other clubs, yes.”

Monika made sure to smile in an appropriately sweet way to underline her point. There was hardly any sugar in the grin that Natsuki showed in response. Which was probably what prompted the intervention of the most diabetes-inducing member of the quartet to take hold of her friend’s hand and make use of her Advanced Pleading Techniques.

“Come on, you had fun today, didn’t you?”   
“Hate reminding you and everyone else, Sayori, but I was bawling my eyes out by the end.”   
“B-b-but those were the  _ good _ kind of tears!”

Could Natsuki have answered in any way other than with a sigh? If that was the case, she made no show of knowing.

“Look, you two, I’ll give it a thought! Promise!”   
“Erm…!”

The three pairs of eyes that turned in unison towards her made Yuri backstep a bit. The shoulder strap of her school bag felt the brunt of her grip’s attempt to tear it off, but after the initial wave of uncertainty, the girl took a deep breath. She took a step forward that exuded with determination unmatched by the timidity of her appearance, which made for quite the odd sight.

“I will think about some other books that you may like… ones with happy endings! So, uhm, what I want to say is…”

Just then, a particularly thick group of clouds drifted enough to let a little more light shine through. The reflection inside Natsuki’s wide, wide eyes was that of a girl alighted in spite of all the darkly tones that seemed to linger about her, the faint shadow of her smile far brighter than the sun accentuating it.

“It would be nice if we could read together again, Natsuki.”

The pink-haired girl hid her eyes under the cover of her hand, feigning blindness in the face of the dying sun’s luminousness, and so doing spun on her heels, starting on her way back home. But while her friend joined her, waving goodbye at the girls going their separate ways, she stopped after the first few steps. Natsuki turned around and, still shielding her face, peeked through her slightly spread fingers: Monika and Yuri were still standing there, the latter holding onto the bag’s strap like her life depended on it.

Her lips munched over empty for a moment, until at last, the words reluctantly found their way out.

“Yeah, I think so too.”

Soon after, the empty streets resonated with the voice of a bubbly angel, shouting to  _ please waaait, you’re going too fast Natsukiii! _


	6. Primo Interludio - The Flightless Bird and the Songless Girl ~1~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief buffer chapter to reassure you all that no, I'm not dead - merely slow like molasses and currently swamped with enough Adult Business that'll likely keep me too busy for a proper update for the next couple of months. Thank you for your patience and continued support!

Once upon a time, there was a forest.

Within the forest was a little, lonely house.

Within the house was a quiet, nearly empty room.

Within the room, where but a sliver of light poured in through thick curtains, was a cage.

Within the cage was a small bird.

The small bird never left its cage, nor did would it fly around inside of it.

The small bird spent day after day grasping its perch, idly singing a tranquil, melancholy tune.

One day, a young girl entered the forest.

Wandering around the forest, she eventually found the house.

Once inside the house, she entered the dark room.

When her eyes adjusted to the darkness inside the room, she saw the cage.

Upon approaching the cage, she addressed the bird.

“Who are you?” asked the young girl.

“I am a bird.” replied the small bird, and then asked: “Who are you?”

“I am a human.” replied the young girl, and then asked: “Why are you inside a cage?”

“I forgot how to fly,” answered the small bird, “And so I was caught. Why are you in this house?”

“I am the witch’s apprentice.” answered the young girl. “She gave me a task to complete and sent me into the forest. If I complete the task, she will teach me her magic.”

“What task did the witch give you?” asked the small bird.

“The witch told me I must learn how to sing the song of the birds.” was the young girl’s reply. “But whenever I approached a bird, it would fly away. So I have yet to learn how to sing their song.”

The small bird thought long and hard. Then, it spread its beak open, and said: “Young girl, have you seen many birds fly?”

The young girl nodded her head. “Yes, I have seen many birds fly.”

The small bird then said: “Young girl, if I teach you how to sing the song of the birds, will you teach me how to fly like the other birds?”

The young girl’s answer was: “Yes. And if I teach you how to fly, will you teach me how to sing your song, small bird?”

“Yes,” said the small bird, “if you teach me how to fly, then I will teach you how to sing my song.”

“Then I will teach you how to fly.” affirmed the young girl.

“Then I will teach you how to sing.” affirmed the small bird.

And so, the small bird and the young girl shared a promise with each other within the lonely house in the forest.


End file.
